Escape the city with GRAPE ESCAPE WINE TOURS

Tuesday, June 27, 2017

Niagara on
the Lake is a great escape from the city, especially if you’re into wine. The region is home to over 85 wineries
offering a variety of award winning wines, tasting tours, restaurants and
pristine acres of vineyards. One of the
best ways to visit these wineries is on guided tours, and there is definitely no
shortage of them in Niagara. However, not
all tours are the same, and if you’re looking for the best, then Grape Escape Wine Tours is the way to go!

Grape Escape offers bicycle and vehicle tours in small and intimate group settings. Each tour is led by a knowledgeable and
friendly staff member who will explore the region with you and take care of any
questions or concerns along the way. The
company has over 10 years of experience in the Niagara Region’s Wine Tour
Industry and have built excellent rapport with the wineries. The service on the tour is top-notch, with absolutely
no wasted time at each stop.

There are a
number of morning and afternoon tours to pick from, each of them offering wine
samples of course, but some also include lunch, cheese pairings, brewery visits
and more. I opted for the afternoon bicycle
tour with wine and cheese pairings. The
tour included the following:

Visit 4 award
winning VQA wineries *Exact wineries will not be known until the morning of the
tour*

Full facility
tour at one of the four wineries to see ‘behind the scenes’

Taste a
minimum of 12 wines (including Icewine)

At one of the
wineries 3 wines will be paired with 3 delicious cheeses

Complimentary
pick up of any wine purchases made throughout the day

You can
arrange a hotel shuttle pick-up with the company for an additional cost, or you
can meet the group at the tour start location.

Lisa (It's Not Just About Food) and I met the group at the company location and was greeted by Marcy,
our very passionate tour guide. After
our bike fitting, waiver sign-off, and run down of the day, we set off on our
bikes (single-file only) down the country roads to take in some of the
incredible scenery of Niagara on the Lake.

We visited
Inniskillin, Reif Estate Winery, PondView Estate Winery and Caroline Cellars Winery. Our tour
guide was a lot of fun and a great group leader, she really hooked us up at the wineries and arranged to have the bottles that we purchased
shipped back to the meet up location so that we didn’t have to cycle with them
in our baskets. Each winery arranged some excellent wines for us to sample, and Reif Estate prepared an excellent cheese and wine pairing.

I would definitely
do another bicycle tour with Grape Escape Wine Tours and have been eyeing the *new* Ultimate Wine, Beer & Foodie Bicycle Tour.

These tours
are quite popular so I suggest you book them sooner than later, especially for
the summer months!